Sentence Completions

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Critical Reading: Sentence Completions

Choose the word or set of words that, when inserted in the sentence, best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.

The dramatist was ------- over his lack of funds and his inability to sell any of his plays, and his letters to his wife reflected his unhappiness.

You should always predict a word for the blank before you look at the answers. Doing so will prevent you from becoming prejudiced or trying to make a specific answer fit for no reason. Before you predict however, it is important that you read the sentence carefully. This is a fairly straightforward question and in this case, the definition of the word that goes in  the blank is visible in the sentence. You know that whatever the "dramatist" was feeling, his letters to his wife reflected his "unhappiness". Based on this, you can predict that the word in the blank will be something like "disappointment" or "sadness." Now, all you need to do is look at the words and find the one that matches your prediction.

(A) despondent
(B) supercilious
(C) prudent
(D) encouraged
(E) fortified

As you can see, choice (A) matches your prediction exactly. None of the other choices fit, and infact, only choices (A) and (B) have a negative charge (so even if you did not know what all the words meant, you could probably narrow things down to only 2 choices).

The correct answer is (A)

Vocabulary Tested in this SC:

despondent: In low spirits from loss of hope or courage.

supercilious: Arrogantly superior; showing contemptuous indifference;haughty

prudent: Sagacious in adapting means to ends; circumspect in action, or in determining any line of conduct; careful, discreet, sensible; -- opposed to rash; directed by prudence or wise forethought; evincing prudence

encouraged: To mentally support; to motivate, give courage, hope or spirit

fortified: past tense of fortify

on sat.collegeboard.org 78% of the responses were correct.

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